The episode starts locally with Dave highlighting Stormfreak, a Pittsburgh-area weather enthusiast who has built a following on Reddit by offering practical, level-headed forecasts without the sensationalism that often accompanies severe weather coverage. That leads into a bigger conversation about how Reddit, YouTube, and independent creators increasingly fill information gaps once occupied by traditional specialty television.

Sorg then takes a trip back to the video-store era with Binge Buster, a web experience that lets users browse movies available on their existing streaming subscriptions in an interface inspired by wandering through the shelves of a physical rental store.

Gaming takes over a large part of the conversation, including EA going private in a massive Saudi-backed deal, Netflix getting an extended GTA 6 preview, Atari showing signs of financial improvement, the possibility of accessing Xbox and PC Game Pass titles on Linux and Mac through the XODUS project, new content for the original Quake, and Sorg's experience comparing Xbox cloud gaming with NVIDIA GeForce NOW.

Then things get weird in the best possible way: Diablo is heading to amusement-park Halloween events, while a permanent Freddy Fazbear's Pizza experience complete with animatronics is planned for American Dream.

Dave also shares his latest experience with Adobe Project Indigo, including computational photography, AI photo critiques, and the increasingly blurry line between traditional editing and generative AI. The episode wraps with two ideas that bring physical experiences back into a digital world: Pittsburgh's Lost Lizard renting VHS, DVD, and even Betamax tapes, and Nature Calls Run, an upcoming crowdsourced app designed to help runners, cyclists, travelers, and people with medical needs locate bathrooms, water, and other resources.

Stories, Gadgets & Topics Discussed

• 300–600mm iPhone zoom lens — Dave points listeners toward iPhonography Podcast co-host Greg McMillan's detailed look at an enormous telephoto solution for iPhone photography.
• Stormfreak and Pittsburgh weather on Reddit — Dave highlights the local forecaster's calm, practical approach to Pittsburgh weather and the community that has formed around his posts. They discuss how independent online weather coverage can sometimes be more useful than national television coverage when people need highly local information.
• The changing role of specialty media — Sorg and Dave compare today's creator-driven information sources with the original promise of channels like The Weather Channel, Discovery, TLC, and Food Network.

• Binge Buster — Sorg tries a streaming discovery site that recreates some of the experience of browsing a video store. Users select the streaming services they already subscribe to and browse movies through virtual box art, descriptions, genres, trailers, staff picks, and more.

  https://bingebuster.net/

• Awesome Person of the Week: Lewis Latimer — Dave profiles the inventor, draftsman, engineer, and patent expert whose work intersected with both Alexander Graham Bell's telephone patent and the development of more durable electric-light filaments.

• Slice on Broadway pizza sauce — Dave discovers jars of Slice on Broadway's original pizza sauce while shopping at Labriola's Italian Market.

• EA goes private — Chachi's Video Game Minute covers EA completing its reported $55 billion sale to a Saudi-backed buyer and what private ownership might mean for the future of EA's games and monetization.

• Netflix and GTA 6 — Netflix is set to feature an extended look at Grand Theft Auto VI on August 27, prompting discussion about whether GTA really needs any additional publicity.

• Atari's financial comeback — Atari reports its strongest annual revenue in roughly a decade, giving Sorg and Dave an opportunity to talk about the strange history of the Atari name, its changing ownership, and the collection of gaming properties associated with it over the years.

• Xbox games potentially coming to Linux and Mac through XODUS — Sorg discusses an open-source reverse-engineering project designed to make compatible Xbox and PC titles accessible beyond Windows, including the possibility of accessing portions of a user's existing Microsoft gaming library.

• Xbox backward compatibility — The conversation touches on original Xbox and Xbox 360 games potentially becoming increasingly accessible through Microsoft's PC ecosystem.

• New Quake content decades later — Quake continues receiving new content around its 30th anniversary, giving players another reason to revisit the classic first-person shooter.

• NVIDIA GeForce NOW vs. Xbox cloud gaming — Sorg compares his experience streaming games like Doom: The Dark Ages and Forza Horizon, finding GeForce NOW's higher-end hardware particularly impressive for demanding, fast-moving games.

• Do you still need a gaming PC? — Cloud gaming raises a bigger question: if a service already supports hundreds of games in your library and provides continuously upgraded hardware, does spending thousands on a dedicated gaming PC still make sense?

• Diablo invades Cedar Point and Six Flags — Blizzard's Diablo becomes part of the Halloween amusement-park experience, leading to a conversation about licensed haunted attractions and the changing amusement-park industry.

• Cedar Fair/Six Flags consolidation and disappearing amusement parks — Dave looks back at the history of older amusement parks, including Pittsburgh-area memories of White Swan Park and the larger trend of parks disappearing as land was redeveloped.

• Freddy Fazbear's Pizza becomes real — A permanent Freddy Fazbear's Pizza experience featuring animatronic stage shows is planned for American Dream in 2027. Naturally, Sorg and Dave wonder whether anybody involved has actually learned the lesson of Five Nights at Freddy's.

• American Dream as the modern destination mall — The conversation expands into how malls are evolving from shopping centers into entertainment destinations with theme parks, water parks, skiing, restaurants, attractions, wrestling events, and other experiences.

• Adobe Project Indigo — Dave continues experimenting with Adobe's computational photography app, particularly challenging lighting situations and shooting directly toward a sunset.

• AI-powered photography reviews — Project Indigo can analyze a photo and provide feedback, giving photographers another way to evaluate composition and possible improvements.

• When an AI edit becomes a different photograph — Dave demonstrates an AI edit that substantially changes clouds and the sky, prompting an important conversation about the difference between enhancing a photograph and generating new visual information.

• AI quietly becoming another editing tool — Sorg shares his experience using AI to quickly create client graphics and discusses how generative tools increasingly feel less like a separate novelty and more like another part of a production workflow.

• Lost Lizard brings video rentals back to Pittsburgh — A Lawrenceville business is renting VHS tapes, DVDs, Betamax tapes, and even retro video games. The concept triggers plenty of nostalgia for independent video stores and their wonderfully strange horror collections.

• Physical media versus digital ownership — Reports of purchased digital movies disappearing from user libraries lead to a larger discussion about what consumers actually own when they "buy" a digital movie.

• Movies Anywhere and fragmented digital libraries — Sorg discusses the usefulness of synchronizing eligible purchases across services while acknowledging that licensing can still make digital ownership complicated.

• Maybe it's time to buy DVDs again — The uncertainty of digital licenses gives physical media another unexpected advantage: nobody can remotely remove a disc from your shelf.

• Nature Calls Run — An upcoming Pittsburgh-created app will crowdsource public restrooms, water sources, and other useful resources for runners, cyclists, travelers, parents, and anyone suddenly asking the most important question of the day: "Where can I go?"

  https://naturecallsapp.com/

• Restroom access as an accessibility and medical issue — The app also plans to educate users about restroom-access laws affecting people with conditions including Crohn's disease and IBS.

• GCXC running events — Dave also discusses upcoming Pittsburgh-area races and the community surrounding GCXC events.

  https://gcxc.com/events-pa

Support AwesomeCast:
https://www.patreon.com/awesomecast

Plus: Pittsburgh Marathon stories, Dungeon Crawler Carl audiobook talk, Chachi’s Video Game Minute, and why Fortnite might secretly be every game now.

Support AwesomeCast at patreon.com/awesomecast.

Sorg, Katie, and Dave Podnar kick things off with their Awesome Things of the Week, and the lineup is wonderfully varied. Dave looks ahead to Artemis II, the upcoming crewed moon mission that will send astronauts beyond low Earth orbit for the first time in decades. The conversation covers how the mission works, why the far side of the moon still creates communication challenges, and why “just rebuilding Apollo” is not nearly as simple as some people assume.

Katie’s pick is much closer to home, at least for Pittsburghers: Heinz Verified. The new site helps users find restaurants that serve Heinz ketchup, making it both practical and hilarious for anyone who has ever been personally offended by mystery catsup in a diner bottle. The crew immediately starts checking cities they’ll be traveling to and appreciates that users can nominate restaurants for inclusion.

Sorg’s pick highlights Chachi’s 3D-printing Etsy shop, Plastic Fun Time. From the now-famous bag of Fs to the Rock Lobster and other fun prints, it’s a cool look at somebody taking a maker hobby and turning it into a real side business. It also turns into a broader appreciation for creative small-scale production and clever product design.

The middle of the episode gets more serious with a discussion around a Stanford study on AI chatbot advice. Katie explains how researchers tested large language models against stories from the “Am I the Asshole?” subreddit and found that chatbots often validated problematic behavior more than humans did. That opens the door to a bigger conversation about AI agreeability, emotional dependency, digital literacy, and what it means when people begin treating chatbots like close confidants instead of tools.

The AI thread continues with What’s Up With That, a browser extension built to help readers analyze articles, pull out new signals, simplify jargon, and better connect ideas across sources. For anyone doing research-heavy work, the crew sees real promise in the concept.

On the creative side, Dave shares Adobe Illustrator’s Project Turntable, which can rotate 2D vector art in 3D space. That sparks a discussion about animation workflows, creative accessibility, and the kinds of production bottlenecks tools like this might reduce.

The episode also finds time for ChannelSurfer.tv, a retro-TV style interface for YouTube, plus a look at Apple’s TikTok presence, where the company seems to be leaning into a Finder-inspired mascot to help explain macOS features in a more playful way.

Dave also wraps up Women’s History Month by spotlighting several women who shaped space science, leading to a thoughtful discussion about visibility, representation, and why stories like these matter.

And then, in true AwesomeCast fashion, the crew ends up hyped about LEGO Zelda sets, including Ocarina of Time: The Final Battle and the Great Deku Tree, prompting nostalgia, sticker shock, and renewed debate over whether Sorg finally needs to properly play Ocarina of Time.

If you like your tech podcasts with equal parts curiosity, commentary, and chaos, this is a great episode.

Links from this episode
Chachi’s Etsy shop / Plastic Fun Time
https://www.etsy.com/shop/plasticfuntime/?etsrc=sdt
Heinz Verified
https://www.heinz.com/heinzverified
Artemis II launch article
https://www.wired.com/story/artemis-ii-countdown-how-and-when-to-watch-the-launch-of-the-manned-mission-to-the-moon/
Women who shaped our understanding of space
https://womenshistory.si.edu/blog/five-women-who-shaped-our-understanding-space
Channel Surfer
https://channelsurfer.tv/?ch=14
What’s Up With That
https://whatsupwiththat.app/practice/
Adobe Illustrator Project Turntable article
https://9to5mac.com/2026/03/30/adobe-illustrator-now-lets-you-rotate-2d-vectors-in-3d-space/
Apple on TikTok
https://www.tiktok.com/@apple?_r=1&_t=ZP-959iBFWcaSN
LEGO Ocarina of Time: The Final Battle
https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/ocarina-of-time-the-final-battle-77093?cmp=PSO-FBIG-AMS-EN-RE-PO-LPV-LR_EXCLUSIVE_PRODUCT_LAUNCH-SHOP-HA-LkAd-PRS-Always_On-GAMINGZ_P&utm_campaign=120242713322920054&utm_content=120245958217060054&utm_id=120242713322920054&utm_medium=paid&utm_source=fb&utm_term=120242713322930054
LEGO Great Deku Tree 2-in-1
https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/great-deku-tree-2-in-1-77092

The panel breaks down how AI tools became genuinely useful in everyday workflows, from content production and health tracking to decision-making and trend analysis. Rob shares why Bambu Labs 3D printers represent a turning point in consumer and professional 3D printing, removing friction and making rapid prototyping accessible for creators, engineers, and hobbyists alike.

The episode also covers the evolving role of AI in media creation, concerns around over-reliance and trust, and why human-made content may soon become a premium feature. Intern Mac reflects on changing career paths into media production, while the crew revisits their 2025 tech predictions, holds themselves accountable, and locks in bold forecasts for 2026.

Plus: Chachi’s Video Game Minute, AI competition heating up, Apple Vision Pro speculation, and why “AI inside” may need clearer definitions moving forward.

Katie, Chilla, and Sorg are back in studio joined by John Carman this week to run down the tech news you should know about, including:

• Looks like we've got some gaming news lined up for this episode.
• Apex Legends was released, and Chilla is sharing his thoughts.
• We're comparing Apex Legends to Fortnite.
• Sorg's Awesome Thing of the Week is Fortnite's Marshmello concert.
• Rizz discovered the BEST Twitch channel. Sorg is sharing with all of us.
• Xbox Live is coming to other platforms in the near future.
• Dr. Mario World is coming to mobile gaming.
• Sony has filed a patent for backwards compatibility.
• Worried about losing your Apple AirPods? Turn them into earrings!
• Chilla has the 5GE!
• American Airlines flights will now have free Apple Music streaming if you're a subscriber.
• Amazon is teaming up with Audible for a choose-your-own adventure experience on Alexa.
• We've decided that Slice needs an Alexa skill to order pizza for us.
• News Guard is helping you find out whether it's fake news or the real thing.

After the show remember to:

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